Definition of Periods—Passage from Pliocene to Quaternary—Scarcity of Human Remains in Tertiary—Denudation—Evidence from Caves wanting—Tertiary Man a necessary inference from widespread existence of Quaternary Man—Both equally inconsistent with Genesis—Was the first great Glaciation Pliocene or Quaternary?—Section of Perrier—Confirms Croll\'s Theory—Elephas Meridionalis—Mammoth—St. Prest—Cut Bones—Instances of Tertiary Man—Halitherium—Bal?onotus—Puy Courny—Thenay—Evidence for—Proofs of Human Agency—Latest Conclusions—Gaudry\'s Theory—Dryopithecus—Type of Tertiary Man—Skeleton of Castelnedolo—- Shows no approach to the Missing Link—Contrary to Theory of Evolution—- Must be sought in the Eocene—Evidence from the New World—Glacial Period in America—Pal?olithic Implements—Quaternary Man—Similar to Europe—California—Conditions different—Auriferous Gravels—Volcanic Eruptions—Enormous Denudation—Great Antiquity—Flora and Fauna—Point to Tertiary Age —Discovery of Human Remains—Table Mountain—Latest Finds—Calaveras Skull—Summary of Evidence—Other Evidence—Tuolumne—Brazil—Buenos Ayres—Nampa Images—Take us farther from First Origins and the Missing Link—If Darwin\'s Theory applies to Man, must go back to the Eocene.

The first difficulty which meets us in this question is that of distinguishing clearly between the different geological periods. No hard-and-fast line separates the Quaternary from the Pliocene, the Pliocene from the Miocene, or the Miocene from the Eocene. They pass from one into the other by insensible gradations, and the names given to them merely imply that such considerable changes have taken place in the fauna 344 as to enable us to distinguish one period from another. And even this only applies when we take the periods as a whole, and see what have been the predominant types, for single types often survive through successive periods. The course of evolution seems to be that types and species, like individuals, have their periods of birth, growth, maturity, decay, and death. Thus fish of the ganoid type appear sparingly in the Silurian, culminate in the Devonian, and gradually die out in the later formations. So also Saurian reptiles appear in the Carboniferous, culminate in the Lias, and die out with the Secondary, or so nearly so that the crocodilia are their sole remaining representatives.

And this applies when we attempt to take our first step backwards in tracing the origin of man, and follow him from the Quaternary into the Pliocene. When did the Pliocene end and the Quaternary begin? Within which of the two did the first great glacial period fall? Does pre-glacial mean Pliocene, or is it included in the Quaternary? and to which do the oldest human remains belong, such as the skeletons of Spy?

The difficulty of answering these questions is increased because, as we go back in time, the human remains which guide us in the Quaternary age necessarily become scarcer. Mankind must have been fewer in number, and their relics to a great extent removed by denudation. Thus the evidence from caves, which affords by far the most information as to Quaternary man, entirely fails us as to the Pliocene and earlier periods. This may be readily accounted for when we consider the great amount of the earth\'s surface which has been removed by denudation. In fact we have seen that nearly 2000 feet of a mountain range must 345 have disappeared from denudation in the Weald of Kent, since the streams from it rolled down the gravels with human implements, scattered over the North Downs as described by Professor Prestwich. What chance would Tertiary caves have of surviving such an extensive denudation? Moreover, if any of the present caves existed before the glacial period, their original contents must have been swept out, perhaps more than once, before they became filled by the present deposits. There is evidence in many caves that this was the case, from small patches of the older deposit being found adhering to the roof, as at Brixham and Maccaguone in Sicily, in which latter case flakes of chipped stone and pieces of carbon were found by Dr. Falconer in these patches of a hard breccia.

There is another consideration also which must have greatly diminished the chance of finding human remains in Tertiary deposits. Why did men take to living in dark and damp caves? Presumably for protection against cold. But in the Miocene and the greater part of the Pliocene there was no great cold. The climate, as shown by the vegetation, was mild, equable, and ranged from semi-tropical to south-temperate, and the earth was to a certain extent covered by forests sustaining many fruit-bearing trees. Under such conditions men would have every inducement to live in the open air, and in or near forests where they could obtain food and shelter, rather than in caves. And a few scattered savages, thus living, would leave exceedingly few traces of their existence. If the pygmy races of Central Africa, or of the Andaman Islands, became extinct, the chances would be exceedingly small of a future geologist finding any of their stone implements, which 346 alone would have a chance of surviving, dropped under secular accumulations of vegetable mould in a wide forest.

It is the more important therefore where instances of human remains in Tertiary strata, supported by strong prima facie evidence, and vouched for by competent authorities, do actually occur, to examine them dispassionately, and not, as a good many of our English geologists are disposed to do, dismiss them with a sort of scientific non possumus, like that which was so long opposed to the existence of Quaternary man, and the discoveries of Boucher-de-Perthes. It is perfectly evident from the admitted existence of man throughout the Quaternary period, already spread over a great part of the earth\'s surface, and divided into distinct types, that if there is any truth in evolution, mankind must have had a long previous existence. The only other possible alternative would be the special miraculous creations of men of several different types, and in many different centres, at the particular period of time when the Tertiary was replaced by the Quaternary. In other words that, while all the rest of the animal creation have come into existence by evolution from ancestral types, man alone, and that not merely as regards his spiritual qualities, but physical man, with every bone and muscle having its counterpart in the other quadrumana, was an exception to this universal law, and sprang into existence spontaneously or by repeated acts of supernatural interference.

As long as the account of the creation in Genesis was held to be a divinely-inspired narrative, and no facts contradicting it had been discovered, it is conceivable that such a theory might be held, but to admit 347 evolution for Quaternary, and refuse to admit it for Tertiary man, is an extreme instance of "straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel," for a duration of even 10,000 or 20,000 years is just as inconsistent with Genesis as one of 100,000 or half a million.

In attacking the question of Tertiary man, the first point is to aim at some clear conception of where the Pliocene ends and the Quaternary begins. These are after all but terms applied to gradual changes through long intervals of time; still they require some definition, or otherwise we should be beating the air, and ticketing in some museums as Tertiary the identical specimens which in others were labelled as Quaternary. This turns very much on whether the first great glaciation was Pliocene or Quaternary, and must be decided partly by the order of superposition and partly by the fauna. If we can find a section where a thick morainic deposit is interposed between two stratified deposits, a lower one characterized by the usual fauna of the Older Pliocene, and an upper one by that of the Newer Pliocene, it is evident that the glacier or ice-cap which left this moraine must have existed in Pliocene times. We know that the climate became colder in the Pliocene, and rapidly colder towards its close, and that in the cliffs of Cromer, the forest bed with a temperate climate had given place to Arctic willows and mosses, before the first and lowest boulder-clay had brought blocks of Scandinavian granite to England. We should be prepared, therefore, for evidence that this first period of greatest cold had occurred within the limits of the Pliocene period.

Such evidence is afforded by the valleys which radiate from the great central boss of France in the 348 Auvergne. The hill of Perrier had long been known as a rich site of the fossil remains of the extinct Pliocene fauna, and its section has been carefully studied by some of the best French geologists, whose results are summed up as follows by Hamy in his Pal?ontologie humaine—

"The bed-rock is primitive protogine, which is covered by nearly horizontal lacustrine Miocene, itself covered by some metres of fluviatile gravels. Above comes a bed of fine sand, a mètre thick, which contains numerous specimens of the well-known mammalian fauna of the Lower Pliocene, characterized by two mastodons (M. Armenicus and M. Borsoni). Then comes a mass of conglomerates 150 mètres thick, consisting of pebbles and boulders cemented by yellowish mud; and above this a distinct layer of Upper Pliocene characterized by the Elephas Meridionalis.

"The boulders, some of which are of great size, are all angular, never rounded or stratified, often scratched, and mostly consisting of trachyte, which must have been transported twenty-five kilomètres from the Puy de D?me. In short, the conglomerate is absolutely indistinguishable from any other glacial moraine, whether of the Quaternary period or of the present day. It is divided into three sections by two layers of rolled pebbles and sands, which could only have been caused by running water, so that the glacier must have advanced and retreated three times, leaving each time a moraine fifty mètres thick, and the whole of this must have occurred before the deposit of the Upper Pliocene stratum with its Elephas Meridionalis and other Pliocene mammals."

The importance of this will presently be seen, for the Elephas Meridionalis is one of the extinct animals 349 which is most directly connected with the proofs of man\'s existence before the Quaternary period. It is also important as confirming the immense time which must have elapsed between the date of the first and second maxima of glacial cold, and thus adding probability to the calculations derived from Croll\'s periods of maximum and minimum eccentricity.

The three advances and retreats of the great Perrier glacier also fit in extremely well with the calculated effects of precession during high eccentricity, as about three of such periods must have occurred in the period of the coming on, culminating, and receding of each phase of maximum eccentricity.

This evidence from Perrier does not stand alone, for in the neighbouring valleys, and in many other localities, isolated boulders of foreign rocks which could only have been transported by ice, are found at heights considerably above those of the more recent moraines and boulders which had been supposed to mark the limit of the greatest glaciation. Thus on the slopes of the Jura and the Vosges, boulders of Alpine rocks, much worn by age, and whose accompanying drifts and moraines have disappeared by denudation, are found at heights 150 or 200 mètres above the more obvious moraines and boulders, which themselves rise to a height of nearly 4000 feet, and must have been the front of glaciers from the Alps which buried the plain of Switzerland under that thickness of solid ice.

The only possible alternative to this evidence from Perrier would be to throw back the duration of the Quaternary and limit that of the Pliocene enormously, by supposing that all the deposits above the great glacial conglomerate or old moraine, are inter-glacial 350 and not Tertiary. This is, as has been pointed out, very much a question of words, for the phenomena and the time required to account for them remain the same by whatever name we elect to call them. But it still has its importance, for it involves the fundamental principle of geology, that of classifying eras and formations by their fauna. If the Elephas Meridionalis is a Pliocene and not a Quaternary species, we must admit, with the great majority of continental geologists, that the first and greatest glaciation fell within the Pliocene period. If, on the other hand, this elephant is, like the mammoth, part of the Quaternary fauna, we may believe, as many English geologists do, that the first glacial period coincided with and probably occasioned the change from Pliocene to Quaternary, and that everything above the oldest boulder-clays and moraines is not Tertiary but inter-glacial.

As bones of the Elephas Meridionalis have been frequently found in connection with human implements, and with cuts on them which could only have been made by flint knives ground by the human hand, it will be seen at once what an interest attaches to this apparently dry geological question, of the age of the great southern elephant.

The transition from the mastodon into the elephant took place in the Old World (for in America the succession is different) in the Pliocene period. In the older Pliocene we have nothing but mastodons, in the newer nothing but elephants, and the transition from the older to the newer type is distinctly traced by intermediate forms in the fossil fauna of the Sewalek hills. The Elephas Meridionalis is the oldest known form of true elephant, and it is characteristic of all the different 351 formations of the Upper Pliocene, while it is nowhere found in cave or river deposits which belong unmistakably to the Quaternary. It was a gigantic animal, fully four feet higher than the tallest existing elephant, and bulky in proportion. It had a near relation in the Elephas Antiquus, which was of equal size, and different from it mainly in a more specialized structure of the molar teeth, and the remains of this elephant have been found in the lower strata of some of the oldest bone-caves and river-silts, as to which it is difficult to say whether they are older or younger than the first glacial period. The remains of a pygmy elephant, no bigger than an ass, have also been found in the Upper Pliocene, at Malta and Sicily, and those of the existing African elephant in Sicily and Spain. It would seem, therefore, that the Upper Pliocene was the golden age of the elephants where they were most widely diffused, and comprised most species and most varieties, both in the direction of gigantic and of diminutive size. But in passing from the Pliocene into the Quaternary period, they all, or almost all, disappeared, and were superseded by the Elephas Primigenius, or mammoth, which had put in a first appearance in the latest Pliocene, and became the principal representative of the genus Elephas in Europe and Northern Asia down to comparatively recent times.

This succession is confirmed by that of the rhinoceros, of which several species were contemporary with the Elephas Meridionalis, while the Rhinoceros tichorinus, or woolly rhinoceros, who is the inseparable companion of the mammoth, appeared and disappeared with him.

In these matters, those who are not themselves specialists must rely on authority, and when we find 352 Lyell, Geikie, and Prestwich coinciding with all modern French, German, Italian, and Belgian geologists, in considering Elephas Meridionalis as one of the characteristic Upper Pliocene fauna, we can have no hesitation in adopting their conclusion.

In this case the section of St. Prest, near Chartres, affords a first absolutely secure foothold in tracing our way backwards towards human origins beyond the Quaternary. The sands and gravels of a river which ran on the bed rock without any underlying glacial débris are here exposed. It had no relation to the existing river Eure, the bed of which it crosses at an angle, and it must have run before that river had begun to excavate its valley, and when the drainage of the country was quite different. The sands contain an extraordinary number of bones of the Elephas Meridionalis, associated with old species of rhinoceros, and other Pliocene species. Lyell, who visited the spot, had no hesitation in calling it a Pliocene river. In fact it never would have been disputed if the question of man\'s antiquity had not been involved in it, for in these sands and gravels have been found numerous specimens of cut bones of the Elephas Meridionalis, together with the flint knives which made the cuts, and other stone implements, rude but still unmistakably of the usual pal?olithic type.

The subjoined plate will enable the reader to compare the arrow-head, which is the commonest type found at St. Prest, with a comparatively recent arrow-head from the Yorkshire wolds, and see how impossible it is to concede human agency to the post-glacial and deny it to the Pliocene specimen.

PLIOCENE.

ARROW-HEAD—ST. PREST.

(Hamy, Pal?ontologie Humaine.)

POST-GLACIAL.

ARROW-HEAD—YORKSHIRE WOLDS.

(Evans, Stone Implements.)

In this and other instances, cut bones afford one of 353 the most certain tests of the presence of man. The bones tell their own tale, and their geological age can be certainly identified. Sharp cuts could only be made on them while the bones were fresh, and the state of fossilization, and presence of dendrites or minute crystals alike on the side of the cuts and on the bone, negative any idea of forgery. The cuts can be compared with those on thousands of undoubted human cuts on bones from the reindeer and other later periods, and with cuts now made with old flint knives on fresh bones. All these tests have been applied by some of the best anthropologists of the day, who have made a special study of the subject, and who have shown their caution and good faith by rejecting numerous specimens which did not fully meet the most rigorous requirements, with the result that in several cases there could be no reasonable doubt that the cuts were really made by human implements guided by human hands. The only possible alternative suggested is, that they might have been made by gnawing animals or fishes. But as Quatrefages observes, even an ordinary carpenter would have no difficulty in distinguishing between a clean cut made by a sharp knife, 354 and a groove cut by repeated strokes of a narrow chisel; and how much more would it be impossible for a Professor trained to scientific investigation, and armed with a microscope, to mistake a groove gnawed out by a shark or rodent for a cut made by a flint knife. No one who will refer to Quatrefages\' Hommes fossilés, and look at the figures of cut bones given there from actual photographs, can feel any doubt that the cuts there delineated were made by flint knives held by the human hand.

In addition to this instance of St. Prest, Quatrefages in his Histoire des Races Humaines, published in 1887, and containing the latest summary of the evidence generally accepted by French geologists as to Tertiary man, says that, omitting doubtful cases, the presence of man has been signalized in deposits undoubtedly Tertiary in five different localities, viz. in France by the Abbé Bourgeois, in the Lower Miocene of Thenay near Pontlevoy (Loir-et-Cher); by M. Rames at Puy Courny near Aurillac (Cantal), in the Upper Miocene; in Italy by M. Capellini in the Pliocene of Monte Aperto near Sienna, and by M. Ragazzoni in the Lower Pliocene of Castelnedolo near Brescia; in Portugal by M. Ribiero at Otta, in the valley of the Tagus, in the Upper Miocene.

CUTS WITH FLINT KNIFE ON RIB OF BAL?ONOTUS—PLIOCENE. From Monte Aperto, Italy. (Quatrefages, Histoire des Races Humaines.)

CUT MAGNIFIED BY MICROSCOPE.

To these may be added the cut bones of Halitherium, a Miocene species, from Pouancé (Maine et Loire), by M. Delaunay; and those on the tibia of a Rhinoceros Etruscus, and other fossil bones from the Upper Pliocene of the Val d\'Arno. In addition to these are the numerous remains, certainly human and presumably Tertiary, from North and South America, which will be referred to later, and a considerable number of cases 355 356 where there is a good deal of prima facie evidence for Tertiary human remains, but where doubts remain and their authenticity is still denied by competent authorities. Among these ought to be placed the instance from Portugal, for although a large celt very like those of the oldest pal?olithic type was undoubtedly found in strata which had always been considered as Miocene, the Congress of Pal?ontologists who assembled at Lisbon were divided in opinion as to the conclusiveness of the evidence.

But there remain six cases in the Old World, ranging from St. Prest in the Upper Pliocene to Thenay in the Lower Miocene, in which the preponderance of evidence and authority in support of Tertiary man seems so decisive, that nothing but a preconceived bias against the antiquity of the human race can refuse to accept it.

I have already discussed this evidence so fully in a former work (Problems of the Future, ch. v. on Tertiary Man) that I do not propose to go over the ground again, but merely to refer briefly to some of the more important points which come out in the above six instances. In three of them, those of the Halitherium of Pouancé, the Bal?onotus of Monte Aperto, and the rhinoceros of the Val d\'Arno, the evidence depends entirely on cut bones, and in the case of St. Prest on that of cut bones of Elephas Meridionalis combined with pal?olithic implements.

The evidence from cut bones is for the reasons already stated very conclusive, and when a jury of four or five of the leading authorities, such as Quatrefages, Hamy, Mortillet, and Delaunay, who have devoted themselves to this branch of inquiry, and have shown 357 their great care and conscientiousness by rejecting numbers of cases which did not satisfy the most rigid tests, arrive unanimously at the conclusion that many of the cuts on the bones of Tertiary animals are unmistakably of human origin, there seems no room left for any reasonable scepticism. I cannot doubt therefore that we have positive evidence to confirm the existence of man, at any rate from the Pliocene period, through the long series of ages intervening between it and the Quaternary.

But the discovery of flint implements at Puy Courny in the Upper Miocene, and at Thenay in the Lower Miocene, carry us back a long step further, and involves such important issues as to the origin of the human race, that it may be well to recapitulate the evidence upon which those discoveries rest.

The first question is as to the geological age of the deposits in which these chipped implements have been found. In the case of Puy Courny this is beyond dispute. In the central region of the Auvergne there have been two series of volcanic eruptions, the latest towards the close of the Pliocene or commencement of the Quaternary period, and an older one, which, from its position and fossils, is clearly of the Upper Miocene. The gravels in which the chipped flints were discovered by M. Rames, a very competent geologist, were interstratified with tuffs and lavas of these older volcanoes, and no doubt as to their geological age was raised by the Congress of French arch?ologists to whom they were submitted. The whole question turns therefore on the sufficiency of the proofs of human origin, as to which the same Congress expressed themselves as fully satisfied.

358

FLINT SCRAPER FROM HIGH LEVEL DRIFT, KENT. (Prestwich.)

The specimens consist of several well-known pal?olithic types, celts, scrapers, arrow-heads and flakes, only ruder and smaller than those of later periods. They were found at three different localities in the same stratum of gravel, and comply with all the tests by which the genuineness of Quaternary implements is ascertained, such as bulbs of percussion, conchoidal fractures, and above all, intentional chipping in a determinate direction. It is evident that a series of small parallel chips or trimmings, confined often to one side only of the flint, and which have the effect of bringing it into a shape which is known from Quaternary and recent implements to be adapted for human use, imply intelligent design, and could not have been produced by the casual collisions of pebbles rolled down by an impetuous torrent. Thus the annexed plate of an implement from the high level drift on the North Downs, shown by Professor Prestwich to the Anthropological Society, is rude enough, but no one has ever expressed the least doubt of its human origin.

The chipped flints from Puy Courny also afford another very conclusive proof of intelligent design. 359 The gravelly deposit in which they are found contains five different varieties of flints, and of these all that look like human implements are confined to one particular variety, which from its nature is peculiarly adapted for human use. As Quatrefages says, no torrents or other natural causes could have exercised such a discrimination, which could only have been made by an intelligent being, selecting the stones best adapted for his tools and weapons.

UPPER MIOCENE IMPLEMENTS. PUY COURNY.

SCRAPER, OR LANCE-HEAD.

Puy Courny. Upper Miocene (Rames).

(Quatrefages, Races Humaines, p. 95.)

SCRAPER.

Puy Courny. Upper Miocene (Rames)

(Quatrefages, Races Humaines, p. 95.)

The general reader must be content to rely to a great extent on the verdict of experts, and in this instance of Puy Courny need not perhaps go further than the conclusion of the French Congress of arch?ologists, who pronounced in favour both of their Miocene and human origin. It may be well, however, to annex a plate showing in two instances how closely the specimens from Puy Courny resemble those of later periods, of the human origin of which no doubt has ever been 360 entertained. It is certainly carrying scientific scepticism to an unreasonable pitch to doubt that whatever cause fashioned the two lower figures, the same cause must equally have fashioned the upper ones; and if that cause be human intelligence in the Quaternary period it must have been human or human-like intelligence in the Upper Miocene.

COPARE QUATERNARY IMPLEMENTS.

WOKEY HOLE—GLACIAL.

(Evans, Stone Implements, p 473.)

PLATEAU DRIFT.

North Downs, Kent (Prestwich).

The evidence for the still older implements of Thenay is of the same nature as that for those of Puy Courny. First as regards the geological horizon. Subjoined is the section at Thenay as. made by M. Bourgeois, verified by MM. Vibraye, Delaunay, Schmidt, Belgrand, and others, from personal inspection, and given by M. Hamy in his Pal?ontologie humaine.

361 It would seem that there could be little doubt as to the geological position of the strata from which the alleged chipped flints come. The Faluns are a well-known marine deposit of a shallow sea spread over a great part of Central and Southern France, and identified, beyond a doubt, as Upper Miocene by its shells. The Orleans Sands are another Miocene deposit perfectly characterized by its mammalian fauna, in which the Mastodon Angustidens first appears, with other peculiar species. The Calcaire de Beauce is a solid freshwater limestone formed in the great lake which in the Miocene age occupied the plain of the Beauce and extended into Touraine. It forms a clear horizon or dividing line between the Upper Miocene, characterized by the Mastodon, and the Lower Miocene, of which the Acrotherium, a four-toed and hornless rhinoceros, is the most characteristic fossil.

SECTION AT THENAY.

9. Quaternary Alluvium.
8. Falums—chipped flints.
7. Orleans Sands—chipped flints.
6b. Calcaire de Beauce—compact.
6a. " Marly—no flints.
5. Clayeye Marl, with Acrotherium—few flints.
4. Marl with nodules—flints.
3. Clay—chief site of cut flints.
2. Marl and clay—very few flints.
1. Marl and silex—no chipped flints.

362 The supposed chipped flints are said to appear sparingly in the upper deposits, disappear in the Calcaire de Beauce, and reappear, at first sparingly and then plentifully, in the lacustrian marls below the limestone. They are by far the most numerous in a thin layer of greenish-yellow clay, No. 3 of section, below which they rapidly disappear. There can be no question therefore that if the flints really came from the alleged deposits, and really show the work of human hands, the savages by whom they were chipped must have lived on the shores or sand-banks of this Miocene lake. As regards the geological question, it is right to observe that Professor Prestwich, who visited the section a good many years ago in company with the Abbé Bourgeois, and who is one of the highest authorities on this class of questions, remained unconvinced that the flints shown him really came from the alleged strata below the Calcaire de Beauce, and thought that the specimens which appeared to show human manufacture might have come from the surface, and become intermixed with the natural flints of the lower strata.

The geological horizon, however, seems to have been generally accepted by French and Continental geologists, especially by the latest authorities, and the doubts which have been expressed have turned mainly on the proof of human design shown by the implements. This is a question which must be decided by the authority of experts, for it requires special experience to be able to distinguish between accidental fractures and human design, in implements of the extremely rude type of the earlier formations. The test is mainly afforded by the nature of the chipping. If it consists of a number of small chips, all in the same direction, with 363 the result of bringing one face or side into a definite form, adapted for some special use, the inference is strong that the chips were the work of design. The general form might be the result of accident, but fractures from frost or collisions simulating chipping could hardly be all in the same direction, and confined to one part of the stone. The inference is strengthened if the specimen shows bulbs of percussion, where the blows had been struck to fashion the implement, and if the microscope discloses parallel stri? and other signs of use on the chipped edge, such as would be made by scraping bones or skins, while nothing of the sort is seen on the other natural edges, though they may be sharper. But above all, the surest test is afforded by a comparison with other implements of later dates, or even of existing savages, which are beyond all doubts products of human manufacture.

Tried by these tests, the evidence stands as follows—

When specimens of the flints from Thenay were first submitted to the Anthropological Congress at Brussels, in 1867, their human origin was admitted by MM. Worsae, de Vibraye, de Mortillet, and Schmidt, and rejected by MM. Nilson, Hebert, and others, while M. Quatrefages reserved his opinion, thinking a strong case made out, but not being entirely satisfied. M. Bourgeois himself was partly responsible for these doubts, for, like Boucher-de-Perthes, he had injured his case by overstating it, and including a number of small flints, which might have been, and probably were, merely natural specimens. But the whole collection having been transferred to the Arch?ological Museum at St. Germain, its director, M. Mortillet, selected those which appeared most demonstrative of human origin, 364 and placed them in a glass case, side by side with similar types of undoubted Quaternary implements. This removed a great many doubts, and later discoveries of still better specimens of the type of scrapers have, in the words of Quatrefages, "dispelled his last doubts," while not a single instance has occurred of any convert in the opposite direction, or of any opponent who has adduced facts contradicting the conclusions of Quatrefages, Mortillet, and Hamy, after an equally careful and minute investigation.

MIDDLE MIOCENE IMPLEMENTS.

SCRAPER FROM THENAY.

(Hamy, Pal?ontologie Humaine, p. 49.)

SCRAPER, OR BORER. Thenay.

(Showing bulb of percussion. Quatrefages, Races Humaines, p. 92.)

In order to assist the reader in forming an opinion as to the claim of these flints from Thenay, to show clear traces of human design, I subjoin some illustrations of photographs in which they are compared with specimens of later date, which are undoubtedly and by universal consent works of human hands, guided by human intelligence.

These figures seem to leave no reasonable doubt that some at least of the flints from Thenay show unmistakable signs of human handiwork, and I only hesitate to accept them as conclusive proofs of the existence of man in the Middle Miocene, because such an authority as Prestwich retains doubts of their having come from the 365 geological horizon accepted by the most eminent modern French geologists.

MIDDLE MIOCENE IMPLEMENTS.

BORER, OR AWL. Thenay. Miocene.

(Congrès Préhistorique, Bruxelles, 1872.(Congrès Préhistorique, Bruxelles, 1872.)

KNIFE, OR SCRAPER. Thenay.

(Gaudry. Quatrefages, p. 92.)

The evidence of the authenticity of these implements from Thenay is, moreover, greatly strengthened by the discovery of other Miocene implements at Puy Courny, which have not been seriously impugned, and by the essay of Professor Prestwich, confirming the discovery of numerous flint implements in the upper level gravels of the North Downs, which could only have been deposited by streams flowing from a mountain ridge along the Anticlinal of the Weald, of which 2000 feet must have disappeared by sub-a?rial denudation since these rivers flowed northwards from its flanks. How far back such a denudation may carry us is a matter 366 of speculation. Certainly, as Prestwich admits, into the pre-glacial or very early glacial ages, and possibly into the Tertiaries, but at any rate for a time which, by whatever name we call it, must be enormous according to any standard of centuries or millenniums. And what is specially interesting in these extremely ancient implements is that, in Prestwich\'s words, "these plateau implements exhibit distinct characters and types such as would denote them to be the work of a more 367 primitive and ruder race than those fabricated by pal?olithic men of the valley drift times."

COMPARE QUATERNARY IMPLEMENTS.

SCRAPER. Yorkshire Wold.

(Evans, Stone Implements.)

QUATERNARY. Mammoth Period.

River Drift, Mesvin. Belgium.

QUATERNARY. Chaleux, Belgium.

Reindeer Period. (Congrès Préhistorique, Bruxelles, 1872.)

In fact we have only to look at the figures which accompany Prestwich\'s essay,[12] to see that their types resemble those of Puy Courny and Thenay, rather than those of St. Acheul and Moustier.

The following remarks of the Professor would apply almost as well to the Miocene implements as to those of the plateau—

"Unlike the valley implements, the plateau implements are, as a rule, made of the fragments of natural drift flints, that are found scattered over the surface of the ground, or picked up in gravel-beds and merely roughly trimmed. Sometimes the work is so slight as to be scarcely apparent; at others, it is sufficient to show a distinct design and object. It indicates the very infancy of the art, and probably the earliest efforts of man to fabricate his tools and weapons from other substances than wood or bone. That there was an object and design is manifest from the fact that they admit of being grouped according to certain patterns. These are very simple, but they answered to the wants of a primitive people.

"With few exceptions, the implements are small, from 2 to 5 inches in length, and mostly such as could have been used in the hand, and in the hand only. There is, with the exceptions before named, an almost entire absence of the large massive spear-head forms of the valley drifts, and a large preponderance of forms adapted for chipping, hammering, and scraping. With these are some implements that could not have been used in the hand, but they are few and rude. The difference 368 between the plateau and the valley implements is as great or greater than between the latter and the neolithic implements. Though the............